And so for the first time in my football supporting life, the League cup First round is the first game of the season, no doubt a situation brought about by the dicking around with the football calendar that is going on this year to accommodate the big international break at the end of September. Either that or it’s to create an extra weak in the calendar after last year shambles where some teams ran out of midweek slots to play all their games.

Regardless of how it came about, or maybe because it’s a novelty, I think it’s quite good to start with this game and make no mistake, it is the start of the season and we do need to get off to a good start.

Colchester United are our opponents today and the most significant thing about them is that they are managed by Danny Cowley, formally of that lot down the road. Colchester have been a League 2 for about ten years and that doesn’t seem to be a run that’s ending particularly soon, with Cowley already highlighting the difficulty they are having with recruitment this summer.

As for Saints, well the pre-season tour to Germany was wrapped up with a 70 minute game and a 90 minute game for split squads against German third division side Munster. After a win in the 90 minute game, Tonda made reference to the fact that we have to get used to winning games and developing that mentality of stringing wins together. This starts against Colchester.

As I write there’s been no one joining after Lewis Dobbin – there is still plenty of time of course and a lot of Championship sides have been getting deals over the line in the past few days. There’s still time of course but the pressure is on a bit as we need a good start.

One avenue that was allegedly still open, was confirmed shut when the will he / won’t he question still hanging over Ross Stewart was answered as he signed a three-year deal with Swansea. Now I get it. Ross clearly wanted a three year deal and we weren’t going to give him that. I can’t imagine he he’s on any more money at Swansea then he would’ve been at Saints but it’s the guarantee of those three years and at his age with his injury record, you can’t really blame him. Hopefully for Swansea’s sake, he doesn’t spend all bar six months of those three years out injured.

If he does and then leaves, then Swans fans will be as pissed off as we are and it’s another nail in the coffin if you believed that there was a shred of decency and gratitude left in the modern player. I wonder if he is grateful for the club for paying him for those years. I wonder if he’s grateful for the rehabilitation the club provided and the management of his minutes to get him back playing again and into the Scotland squad for a nice little group stage holiday in the summer. My current train of thought is that the fuckery that was used to get out of the optional year leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth. Good luck to him though he is going to cop a load of shit when they come down to St Mary’s. We move on.

In amongst some of the guff that always comes out of of Fans Forums, Johannes Spors revealed to no ones surprise, that we would certainly be looking to strengthen in that area of the pitch and with the likelihood of Shea Charles completing a move to Fulham in the next few days, you would imagine we would be looking in midfield as well though Joe O’Brien Whitmarsh is making a case to be this years’ Cam Bragg.

The forum was more significant than usual of course, because of the end of last season. To my mind though, the questions were answered in an up front manner and I do wonder sometimes, what the fans are expecting them to say. I’ll admit to wanting everyone hung, drawn and quartered at the time but we’re trying to draw a line and move on – despite the FA. One quote I did like was Phil Parsons basically rephrasing the old Millwall maxim. Everyone hates us and I don’t particularly care.

On the pitch, I can’t really seeing any other team apart from Boro, being more fired up against us than they would be anyway and they didn’t seem any more fired up than anyone would expect in the playoff semi final. Pompey fans will think they’re team will be more fired up because of it… but we all know that lot are full of shit. It’s a season of avoiding the noise.

Jay Robinson has found pastures new for this season and has moved on loan to Monza for a season to play under Ivan Juric, until he gets sacked, which is probably inevitable. Personally, I see this as a good move because whilst Jay always looked half decent when he played, there are several players in front of him for the wide attacking positions in the squad. Hopefully we have learned from the Dom Ballard situation and keep hold of all the cards. Dom moved to Bristol City for £5 million so whilst we’ll get a bit of money, the decision to let him go is looking progressively less clever.

Anyway, back to Colchester and the Jobserve Conmmunity Stadium and we’ve gone strong with the first choice keeper and back four, with Stevo getting the nod ahead of Woody. Flynn Downes is doing a lot of work in midfield as Matsuki is in there with him and it’s Fellows, Dobbin and Scienza behind the striker – who surprisingly, is Ben Brereton Diaz and not Cam Archer or Damion Downs.

You know what to expect from League 2 sides to a degree but Colchester get the ball for the first time and play some nice one touch through midfield and work it out wide on our left. In it comes, headed away and the Ihionven has a dig from the edge of the box but straight at Peretz.

After a few of our attacks peter out without getting anywhere, Matsuki gets bored and drills in a long range right-footed effort which he catches well enough but it’s still going up as it flies over the bar.

THB has lost none of his passing range over the summer and finds Scienza wide left and he’s lost none of his mastery of the ball, with a ridiculous bit of control to stop the ball going out and he whips the cross over and BBD has lost none of his ability over the summer and misses it.

Colchester are still playing decent stuff when they get it and a nice reverse pass takes out Bree and there’s a nice turn and shot in the box from Anderson, that Peretz gets down well to, and he’s up to block the rebound from Payne and up again to stop another effort from Anderson.

Tom Fellows is flitting in and out of the game and beats the full-back before pulling a ball back to the edge of the box and Matsuki comes flying in on the stretch and like his previous effort – good power, no direction.

Colchester’s press means that we are almost going back to Russell Martin-ball as he play out from the back but without giving it away ten yards from goal and Stephens and Matsuki bounce the ball out to Manning on the left and he finds Dobbin, who turns and makes space before hammering in a shot that the keeper has to push away. Good that from Dobbin – very direct and only one thought in mind. Dobbin has another go soon after as Fellows once again pulls the ball back but this effort is still going up.

We manage to have one more heart attack moment right on half time as we concede a corner stemming from Fellows pissing about on the edge of the box and when it comes in, our marking is all over the place, free header at the back post and THB gets a boot to it.

Half time and that’s been half-paced and as average as you like. A decidedly pre-season paced effort. The midfield has been outfought and Downes has played pretty well, so I think we can say that playing Matsuki in the middle has not been a roaring success. The less said about BBD up front the better and there’s needs to be an uplift in the quality in the final third which should be provided by the bench. Colchester have been decent both with and without the ball but I would be surprised if they can keep it up.

The second half begin with no changes in personnel but a change in attitude as we step it up. Staright away Scienza worries the full-back before teeing up Downes on the edge of the box and his scuffed effort goes narrowly wide. I am sure that as he hit that, in his minds eye, that was bursting the net. Similarly, a ball drops to BBD in the box and he tries to belt the cover off it and nearly swings himself off his feet playing an airshot.

All possession and no shots for the next ten minutes as Colchester dig in, so it’s time for changes. BBD is put out of his misery and Cyle Larin is on and the other change is Bragg for Fellows, which means Matsuki going wide right.

Straight away we look like a different team with a proper centre forward, even a rusty one. The rust is evident as THB plays a love curling ball towards Larin and he should head it but instead, goes with his left foot and shins it wide. No worries next time though as we work it out left and Manning puts in a genius level cross in the corridor between defenders and keeper and there is Cyle at the back post to knock it into his net with his nose, which really only becomes apparent when he’s blinking away the tears in his eyes in the celebration.

A couple more changes with Azaz and Archer on for Dobbin and Scienza but Colchester are still here and Anderson doesn;t give up on what looks like an overhit ball down our right and gets a foot to it back to Leake, whose effort from a narrow angle flies across the goal. Colchester are beginning to leave gaps now and Archer should do better a Manning put him away but after a 1-2 with Larin, his eventual shot is a Row Z effort.

Archer is involved again as Downes puts Azaz in on the right and his cross is headed back by Larin and Archer is absolutely cleaned out by a donkey challenge by Digby but no penalty. In the Championship, I want players around the referee for that one. Meanwhile, Matsuki has been crunched by Payne for about the tenth time today and off he goes to be replaced by former Colchester-loanee, Romeo Akachukwu.

A Peretz clearance out to the left is well kept in by Archer and Larin flicks inside to Azaz. The man with that extra bit of quality threads it in behind the defender to meet the run of Akachukwu, who allows the defender to go for a hotdog before placing it past the keeper. Really good composed finish.

There’s still time for Archer to get put through and he’s almost in the same situation as Akachukwu a couple of minutes earlier but shows a lack of composure when faced with the last defender and batters the shot against him. No matter though and a nice 2-0 win.

A comfortable looking scoreline in the end but over the 90 minutes, it really wasn’t very comfortable, especially in the first half, where we played propaganda football that didn’t go anywhere and though Colchester didn’t have the ball much, they created a fair amount and we were indebted to Daniel Peretz for his triple save to stop us going a goal behind.

The second half was more like it should’ve been, especially when we made the injection of quality, with the substitutions from the hour mark onwards. Even before that though, we had upped the pace and pinned Colchester back and it was just a case of whether we would score or run out of time. As it was, the introduction of Cyle Larin made the difference straight away as he bundled in a superb Ryan Manning cross with his nose, but the moment of the day was still to come with substitute Romeo Akachukwu running onto superbly weighted ball by fellow substitute Finn Azaz, before sitting the last defender down and slotting it past the keeper. He looks a player.

Tonda sprang a bit of a surprise with the midfield with Matsuki next to Flynn Downs and to be honest, it made us a little bit lightweight and very susceptible to counter attacks as Matsuki was a little bit off the pace in the first half and getting consistently kicked by Colchester’s dirty little git Number 10 Payne in particular, who the referee didn’t seem to want to do anything about.

I’m guessing that a bit of a half-time bollocking was handed out because as I said, it did get significantly better but we were made immeasurably stronger off of the bench. Bragg, Azaz and Larin will all start next week at Watford. In the context of this game, Cam Bragg’s introduction was huge as he apparently completed 30 passes out of 30 and allowed us to totally control the end of the game. With Charles likely to depart and Jander currently injured, he has the opportunity to get a run of games and today won’t have hurt.

There were some sketchy performances in amongst it all as you expect in the first game. Lewis Dobbin didn’t have a full debut to get anyone too excited and Tom Fellows was slightly underwhelming on the right wing. Both had their moments but there just wasn’t enough. Matsuki got some tough treatment from the Colchester midfield but a lot of the time that was because he had taken a poor first touch and got crunched in League Two fashion. He was much better when moved into his usual right wing position.

The line was led, if you want to call it that, by Brereton Diaz who was predictably shocking. We keep saying that he can’t be that bad because he’s scored Championship goals before – but I’ve never seen him be anything other than shite and I speak as I find. He plays like a big clumsy park player – shit first touch, chases it, bundles into a defender, free-kick given away – and repeat. There is some mitigation in that he was starved of service somewhat in the first half, but when he did get it, he looked particularly clueless. Apparently he got 9 touches and I reckon 6 of them were heavy. Also in his defence is the fact that he is not a central striker because he is not good enough to play in the traffic, with two central defenders and a defensive midfielder from the opposition around him. He simply doesn’t have the football IQ or the ability to play that position. He is a winger who can occasionally do the odd good thing when in space and any attempt to make him anything other than that is doomed to failure. The improvement when Larin came on was instant and he was rusty himself.

Tonda must’ve been pleased to get the first game out of the way and he seemed happy with the performance overall. I think ultimately this game will prove to be very useful because it’s a competitive game to get the rust out of the system from preseason. The goalkeeper in the back four were untroubled but looked like they’ve never been away and Flynn Downs was absolutely at his best, flying around the midfield.

So with the first game done, we now move on to Saturday at Watford. I see us picking the same back five with Bragg coming into midfield next to Downes in the absence of Casper Jander and the likely sale of Shea Charles who led the celebrations at the end of the game despite not playing a minute. That tells you something. I would imagine that Scienza, Azaz and Matsuki will make up the three behind Cyle Larin, with Brereton Diaz confined to the bench or maybe Staplewood, or maybe another club.

Bring it on and up the fucking Saints.